A Job at Whole Foods Market Changed My Life
My journey started over ten years ago while working at Whole Foods Market in New York. Back in 2010, many people were coming into the store with newly diagnosed cases of celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the lining of the small intestine.
According to modern medicine, gliadin, the protein in wheat, barley, and rye, causes celiac by causing intestinal permeability in the small intestine and flattening the villi that absorb nutrients from your food. The villi are finger-like hairs that absorb nutrients, so a celiac patient has a nutrient deficiency and usually has a severe case of diarrhea. It is a horrible disease, and many of them were suffering for years until they were diagnosed.
I wanted to help my customers in any way I could, so I took them shopping for their gluten-free diets. We would comb the aisles looking for regular food substitutes such as pasta made from rice and/or corn, gluten-free cookies, muffins, and pretzels. After a few months of these shopping trips, I wanted to help further, so I went on a gluten-free diet myself.
My Gluten-Free Diet
I started my gluten-free diet on a Monday morning, and within three days, I had so much abdominal pain I could barely walk. My body was detoxing and on day 21, the discomfort stopped just as suddenly as it started. I felt great! For most of my life, every time I had a big meal, upper abdominal pain, and a feeling of exhaustion took over. I thought everyone felt that way when they ate and never thought of it as a problem. Apparently, after you eat you should feel good, satisfied, and ready to go on with your day.
As a gluten-free advocate working at Whole Foods, I sought out and brought new gluten-free items into the store. I also sponsored gluten-free events and shared new products at the local Celiac meeting groups and doctors' offices. Whole Foods in Manhasset, NY, had one of the first dedicated gluten-free grocery sections.
The Kaufmann Diet
Sometime in 2013, while I was exploring the Paleo diet, my father suggested I watch a TV program called Know the Cause. Doug Kaufmann was the host, and he spoke about fungi, mycotoxins (the byproducts of fungi), and their relationship with disease. I watched a few shows, and everything he said sounded very logical. The Paleo Diet, with some similarities, had not presented this information. I went on his website, Know The Cause, and ordered a copy of The Fungus Link to Health Problems, volume 2.
Not too far into the book are a few paragraphs about autoimmune diseases and how they can be triggered by an overgrowth of fungi in the body. Kaufmann explains that sugar and grains, including wheat, corn, and peanuts, should not be eaten because they could be contaminated with mold.
What he said made perfect sense and explained why some of my customers had not healed after being on a gluten-free diet for a considerable length of time.
The Kaufmann Diet is a low carbohydrate, high protein diet that starves the fungal poisons in your body. By eliminating many processed foods and adding in good fats, nutrient-dense vegetables, and healthy meats, the fungi die off and better health can be restored.
How I Started The Kaufmann Diet
I made a copy of the one-page diet from my new book and posted it on my refrigerator. My shopping list contained fresh organic vegetables as well as grass-fed beef and grass-fed butter, wild fish, and low-sugar fruits such as blueberries and grapefruits. I ate organic plain yogurt and lots of eggs and raw nuts. Most of the center aisle processed foods and prepared foods were no longer an option.
It should be noted that if I had not gone off gluten for so many years before this, it would have been a lot more difficult. I had struggled with going gluten-free. It took a few weeks to get the gluten completely out of my diet. I was so used to eating everything in moderation. I was working in a kitchen, cooking two meals at home, and it really took a lot of effort to make a drastic change.
Vegetables and big salads with some meat or fish became my new normal foods. I questioned everything I ate. Learning about fungi and taking a good look at what I was eating became an obsession.
How My Life Changed By Removing Processed Foods from My Diet
Within a few months of the Kaufmann Diet, I became genuinely content for the first time in my life. It takes a lot to rattle me these days and I used to have a very short fuse.
On the Kaufmann Diet, there were little things that went away over time, without even realizing they were happening. Dog and cat allergies disappeared in a few months, I used to get a lot of skin tags and angiomas (little red spots on my chest) and haven't gotten either of them in many years. Doug referred to skin growths as "little mushrooms" on a Facebook Live episode.
Ten years ago, I had a pain in my hip that was agonizing on long car rides. It is gone now and not from the gluten-free diet. When I moved down to Key Largo, my diet was not very good for the first six months, the hip pain came back. I went back to Phase One, and it's now gone. My lower back pain is gone too. I was told by a chiropractor many years ago my back hurt because I was tall.
The gluten-free diet helped, but the Kaufmann Diet sealed the deal on my health and well-being.
The Kaufmann Diet Can Help You Too!
Having studied a lot about fungi in the past few years, I have a new appreciation for unprocessed foods. The gluten-free packed foods can help get the gluten out, but there is so much more to getting healthy, with or without celiac disease.
From what I’ve learned over the past decade, if I’m diagnosed with some aggressive disease, I am better prepared to handle it than I would be otherwise. After hearing bad news from a physician, the last thing in the world that you should have to do is start looking for treatments on Google and trying to find the right drug to fix your illness. If you clean up your body now, you’ve got a second chance to make your days more productive and lead a happier life. To me, the Kaufmann Diet is the ultimate clean eating plan.
There are a lot of diets out there and this is my favorite. The information you are about to read is quite compelling!
There is no better time than the present to start your healing process.
To learn more, please read, Kaufmann Diet, Phase 1.
